I have a question for you, do you treat your health like a bank account? So now you may be thinking what has health and bank accounts got to do with each other. Well when you put money into a bank account, it gains interest, which makes it a small investment.

So why is it that we don’t tend to treat our health the same way? isn’t our health a investment surely, it must be if we invest in our health we are making a good investment just as if it were a bank, and we were depositing money each day. We could apply this to food and exercise.

So much is society these days we tend to focus on wealth rather than health, we seem to be so obsessed with how much money we are earning and we never seem to have enough.

So why is it that we don’t tend to treat our health the same way? isn’t our health a investment surely, it must be if we invest in our health we are making a good investment just as if it were a bank, and we were depositing money each day. We could apply this to food and exercise.

So much is society these days we tend to focus on wealth rather than health, we seem to be so obsessed with how much money we are earning and we never seem to have enough.

But which is better? having enough money to get everything you need rather than what you want, and being healthy at the same time, if you don’t invest in your health then you are more likely to become ill even if you don’t feel unwell at this particular time.

We do need balance within our lives and I think having enough money and good health both go hand in hand, what is the point of being poorly if you can’t enjoy your money in a way it becomes meaningless.

Why Invest in It

Well as we have seen above when you invest in something it’s an investment, so if you start treating your body like a bank and invest in it right, then just like money when you invest it wisely you can make more money. So if you look after your body then you will reap the rewards here are some of the things you may experience, a better self-image, feel better, less health problems, less visits to the doctor.

If you could buy those things in a shop or where shares what would you say they were worth? Because I would guess you wouldn’t be able to put a price on them it would be far too expensive.

The reason I am using this analogy is and this may not apply to everybody, is when you have good health it’s so easy to take it for granted, and having money can be very much the same. If we have had no money for along time, it’s something that we can tend to forget about very quickly, and our health is the same more often than not we forget what it is like to have good health.

Food As Deposits

So now we have to use the analogy of the body is a bank, if we invest wisely we do well, so if we eat junk food or food that is no good for us this is like small change. Even though we eat it isn’t a very good investment and in the financial world it would be considered a risk, if you eat food like this they will not be much return after a long time.

You may feel tired, have headaches especially if you are eating a sugar laden diet. And if you continue to keep making these deposits in your body bank, then long term you may have a body bank crisis this could range from anything to diabetes, heart problems, poor immune system function, high cholesterol levels etc. so the interest that we gain from living like this is not good at all.

Healthy Food As Deposits

If we put good food into our body bank then this is more of a wise investment, and is more like investing thousands of pounds or dollars. If you do this you will feel better have high energy, and be investing in a good health investment within your body bank. You are far more less likely to become unwell so often, have heart problems, have poor immune system function, and all the other problems associated with eating a poor diet.

No Exercise As Deposits

If you don’t exercise at all then at the same can apply as far as your health is concerned, not exercising at all is like putting no money in your bank account so you get very little interest. And the results of this are feeling tired, you may suffer from depression, or anxiety, if you have a bad day at work and don’t exercise there is no where to get rid of your frustration so you just carry it around in your body bank.

Were it does very little, so if you don’t do any exercise you won’t get a very good long-term investment, in your body bank and just like money your health becomes that instead you lose your investment because you didn’t invest wisely. In your health from the start

Exercise As Deposits

If on the other hand that you decide to start investing in your body bank with exercise, then over a period of time your interest will turn into, feeling great, having more energy, feeling positive, and a overall feeling of well-being. So if you invest wisely as regards to exercise just like money grows, so will you and your health. Now let me ask you a question have you ever thought as your body as a bank. If you look after your body bank you will have a great overall return and will have may made a very wise investment.

So do everything you can to look after your body bank and you will get lots of interest back which equates to good health. And your body bank manager will thank you.

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Try not to be alarmed by the title of this particular post. It isn’t as bad as it seems. However, it does contain some relevant information about what drinking fizzy drinks can do to you.

According to some recent research, which was put together in a study If you drink more than two cans of fizzy drink, it may start to affect your liver. What many people may not know is that sugar can actually make your liver expand.

This is something that I read quite a long time ago now.  As regards what sugar can do to you long-term. We normally tend to associate liver damage, with drinking alcohol or if you eat too much fatty food this can cause a similar problem.

Some scientists in Israel found that people in their study that had consumed, a litre of fizzy drink were for more likely to contract. The start of liver disease, what they found from the research, is if you consume a few cans, a day of something like Coca-Cola, or any other soft drink that is high in sugar

Then you’re far more likely to, contract diseases like diabetes, possible heart problems, and diseases of the liver. The study, was done in Israel , they had two groups of people. None of which had any traces of fatty liver disease.

When the results came back. Eighty percent of those that had been drinking high sugar concentration fizzy drinks were starting to show signs of slight liver damage.

One of the researchers involved in the study, commented saying that it’s the ingredient called fructose which is at the root of the problem. It’s probably best to avoid drinks that have high levels of fructose, another thing to bear in mind about this is the initial research was done in Israel and not our country namely the United Kingdom . It’s a good idea to keep your liver healthy as it helps with weight loss.

Source and references http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk

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This is a bit of a digression from what I normally, blog about it is more of a lifestyle post and represents something that I have noticed. That is very prominent in my own life everything you read in this post, can relate to eating food and losing weight.

The reason I say that is because they can also have fear related aspects to them. Some people in a study in France were scared of exercising, just in case they did some damage to their bodies. Or you can be scared of not having something to eat. Or even losing weight

Why do we actually have a comfort zone then, and how is it created?. This tends to be one of those things that, encroaches upon us. With out even realising it, our boundaries can become smaller and smaller over a period of time. But we may or may not be actually consciously aware of this.

It’s more of a subconscious way of being, sometimes the reasons this happens is that something from our past. Has caused us a lot of pain, or it could be a comment that was quite hurtful, and knocked our confidence.

What happens when we are stuck in them

When you get stuck in your comfort zone you can think of it as a circle, and you tend to stay inside it a bit like a virtual bubble. And rather than stepping out of it every so often and feeling some sort of discomfort. We tend to stay inside it and then start to create a very inhibited and restricted lifestyle as a result of behaving this way.

Not only does your world become smaller, it can also become very boring. The reason for this is you’re not really challenging yourself to take any risks. The thought of actually doing something risky, seems far too scary we build these mental pictures up in our minds.

Of what could happen to us, and as long as we continue to do this the fear will always be there. And getting out of your comfort zone will be even harder. So this in effect creates a vicious circle and is probably likely to cause such problems as anxiety and depression.

Frustration itself is a forerunner for anxiety which in turn leads to depression. It’s your minds way of telling you not to do something. As soon as the amygdala in your brain sees you try to do something, out of the ordinary it will start the process of generating the fear.

Unless you actually start to face it then, and only then will the fear start to shrink.

How they affect us

If you are stuck in a comfort zone here are some of the things that you might have going on in your life.

• Feeling very unfulfilled with your life as it is at the moment
• Suffering from apathy, which means no real passion in your life, it will feel quite emotionless probably the same sort of emotion a bit like a flat line
• Be lacing direction in your life, and not doing what you really want to do have lots of ideas but never really making something of them
• You may have a lack of confidence and some self-esteem issues also

Here are some examples which may be prominent in your life, when you tend to get stuck inside a comfort zone.

Robotic lifestyle

when we do things the same way. Day in and day out, it becomes automatic our brains make synaptic connections and clusters of brain cells are formed. In order to make doing the particular task at hand easier. So the more we do a particular thing our brain realises it needs more cells in order to do this process.

And it goes about the process of making it automatic so that, you are able to do other things when the time comes this is why it is easy to create bad habits.

Strange as it may seem we do work very hard at them. Even though a lot of them work against us. There is a saying in NLP which in case you are not familiar with means Neuro Linguistic Programming, which says that if you do one thing one way.

Then you are behaving like a robot, do something two different ways then you are starting to see some changes, do something three different ways then you will see very big changes.

Going through the motions

Every day runs into another it’s almost if as you are on autopilot, this might be a typical day for you or anybody for that matter. Get up get dressed, go downstairs, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, go to work, come home, eat your dinner, watch TV, and go to bed. Now this is only a hypothetical scenario and only represents a basic day but if you look at it. It can represent overtime quite a boring routine. And some people probably do this every day. Because it seems quite normal.

When you live your life from the realms of a comfort zone it does become very restrictive, and there may be so many things that you would like to do, but don’t due to a lack of fear.

The comfort zone thermostat

Just like a house that has a heating system in that monitors temperature. We have something in our minds that monitors our comfort zone if you like, it’s constantly being regulated much the same as the thermostat in the house. As we get near to the edge of our comfort zone, we might start to feel slightly anxious and scared.

Almost as if something terrible is going to happen, even though it isn’t so, when we get close to this feeling we tend to step back. So once the fear/threat has gone, we tend to relax go back in our comfort zone and that is where we stay.  And this is going on all day long as long as we are out in the wide world.

This actually acts as a red light in our minds, much the same as a traffic light signal. Telling us to stop when really we shouldn’t be. When we tend to be in a state of mind such as this.  We are far less likely to want to take risks so because of this.

Our world shrinks yet again. This ultimately stops us from growing, growth is a great thing once you are growing.

Your whole mindset tends to change you want to try new things, feel far more adventurous and liberated, and feel less restricted in your lifestyle which is far more exciting.

When you are growing your confidence will grow through the roof, and you will be willing to take more risks and try different things. If you are on the flip side however, you tend to be stuck in the middle where you feel comfortable and don’t want to move either side. If you can imagine drawing a line in the sand and keeping yourself the other side of it.

That is where your comfort zone is, it’s not until you actually step out of it that you notice how different things are. The whole world seems a totally different place, it seems open and inviting and welcoming and far less scary.

What can we actually do?

Here are a few examples of things to try they don’t need to be massive things just anything that makes change.

• Go home a different way
• Do something different at lunchtime
• Talk to a stranger in a shop or where ever you may be, this might not be a good idea for children though
• Try eating somewhere else a different restaurant
• Do something that you have always wanted to do but always felt afraid to do it
• Experiment with different ways of doing things, for example have you always wanted to do your own DIY for example, but always thought you couldn’t do it. Have a go yourself you might be surprised what you find
• Go on a team building activity holiday not only will this give you interaction with other people, you will be able to strengthen other skills which you might not have known that you had

Here is one less thing to finish this off get a sheet of paper and write down 50 things to get you out of your comfort zone, when you first start to think about doing this it may seem very hard. But you may not even realise that they are there.

One of the reasons I decided to write this post is it something that has been, a very big part of my life and I thought people may be able to relate to it like I have myself. So on a closing note bust out of your comfort zone and feel comfortable doing it.

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future.

You must break out of your current comfort zone and

become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.

Denis Waitley

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In the normal way of doing things in our society, if your like everybody else, somewhere in the world where ever it may be you will be reading this post. More than likely sitting down whether it be, on your laptop or perhaps at home in your nice comfortable computer chair.

But what say for instance if that was doing you more harm than good ? We take sitting down for granted it’s something that we do and probably do it more than we should do, but just accept it as a normal part of everyday life. But now even this can be a bit of a hazard, but the only reason we don’t feel it is one, is because like everything in life sometimes we tend to live like mushrooms in dark corners not wanting to know about our own bad habits.

And the more time that you spend sitting down in a chair the more it slows down the natural fat burning properties. Within your body the medical name for this particular problem is called, metabolic syndrome there are now in the United States of America 47 million people who have this particular problem.

Which causes health problems like diabetes, obesity and heart disease. Researches have now have come to the conclusion that it’s because we like to keep our best friend happy by sitting on it too much, this groundbreaking research has found that too much sitting about for long periods of time by far doubles.

And even in some cases can triple the amount of cases of people whom have problems with obesity and other health issues related to being overweight. The reason for this which has been brought to light by all these various studies, is a an enzyme in people which encourages fat to be used in the body which is called liapse, when this particular hormone is working and switched on its job role is to take up fat into muscles, so it is used for energy.

Otherwise what tends to happen is the fat will recirculate around your body, and clog up arteries an end up being in your organs etc which is where it doesn’t need to be. Samples of plasma were taken from various participants in studies, when the people were sitting down and ate a meal the sample was very cloudy.

However when they took the same sample from somebody, who had eaten and was standing up, it was found to be clear. So the researchers have said that if you are doing something then doing do it standing up, rather than sitting down. Dr Hamilton one of the lead researchers of the study said that we are not talking about a small amount of fat here, it is a awful lot. Dr Hamilton himself swapped his own chair for a treadmill once he found out about this method of fat being recirculated in human bodies.

There is no reason why you can’t stand up and walk around while you are on the phone, or even watching TV for that matter. You can burn 60 calories or thereabouts just by standing and there is another added bonus. It also improves your cholesterol levels namely HDL which is the better of the two cholesterols, LDL is the bad cholesterol which blocks up your arteries. So the moral of this story is stand up for your health.

Source http://www.sciencedaily.com

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We have a generation of up and coming obese children these days, and this is probably mainly due to the fact that they don’t exercise like they should do, unlike they did in years gone by. It has been recently reported that the amount of time that modern-day children spend actually doing exercise is at it’s lowest levels in a long time.

A lot of parents these days grossly under estimate how much exercise their children are actually doing, which is putting their children on a obesity timebomb, which is ticking away without even them realising it.The study which was done from corresponding universities Glasgow and Newcastle proved that many six and seven-year-olds are dangerously under active, what they managed to evaluate from the study was that by the year 2010.

A lot of children will be overweight unless they actually start to do some physical activity, children are supposedly supposed to do one hour’s exercise either running around or playing with their friends, or whatever it is they like to do.

Government figures have shown that six to seven-year-olds tend to be active for 146 minutes each day. But this research that has come to light has said that girls have roughly 22 minutes and boys only 26 minutes exercise per day. The researchers used a device which is called a accelerometer which measured their overall activity throughout the day.

Children are being advised to take lesser car journeys and parents please take note here, how many of you take your children to school in a car when they could be walking or going on their bike instead. It has become apparent that the child obesity problem has been overlooked very much so by the government. It would seem times are changing very much so compared to how they were when I was younger.

There didn’t seem to be many days go by where I wasn’t on my pushbike, playing football, playing cricket, or just generally running around playing games. I can quite honestly say I used to be all over the place, I don’t think children these days play games like I used to when I was younger.

Which involved moving around a lot, it does make me wonder if they actually had to do a cross-country run, like we used to have to do I dare say most of them. Wouldn’t even get past the first part of it let alone complete it. I sometimes wonder if it’s not being cool being a person who looks after your health. Or are you somebody that might be called a sissy if you are doing regular exercise.

Or is it merely just a sign of the times that our children are growing to grow up, as obese adults and contract diseases such as type two diabetes, heart problems and all the other things which are associated with being overweight.

I suppose when you have the choice between sitting down and playing a computer game for hours and hours, or playing a Xbox game with your friends online. Then getting some exercise outside probably does seem quite boring compared to doing that.

The problem is we really do need to educate our children to what will happen to them if they don’t start to move around a lot more than they are now. Here are some other things I used to do when I was younger I wonder if the children of today even attempt half of these.

Cycling where ever I went long and short distances

Swimming

Playing football

Judo

Walking to the swimming baths

Cross-country runs

Physical education twice a week at school

Rugby

Cricket

Doing errands for my parents

Delivering newspapers in all weathers I might add

Scout camping

Sponsored walks

Thinking about it now I never even realised how much I used to do compared to what I do now. Perhaps as people overtime we tend to think that we can get away with doing very little activity when in fact nothing is further from the truth

So it’s time to take action now rather than later

Source the current bun sorry Sun newspaper

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